Former Seattle architect Gordon Walker’s new Orcas Island retirement home has been featured in the Seattle Times for its innovative approach to design for senior living.

“The Walker-Pope home is modular and prefabricated, based on a 16-foot grid sized to fit on a flatbed truck,” describes the story. “It sits on steel legs perched over the land, not scraped into it. It is made of stock materials: six-lam plywood for countertops, high-density fiberboard and vertical-grain fir doors on the walls. And contemporary; walls of glass, steel beams exposed, free of trim and molding, concrete floors.”

Walker is 72, and his wife Sandie Pope is 61. Walker told Seattle Times writer Rebecca Teagarden he’d been working on ideas for senior condo designs to suit Orcas Island – four modular units that would allow seniors to continue activities, to compensate for disabilities, and to continue to contribute to and be engaged with the community. He reportedly said that the initial community response to his modular, pre-fabricated, modern design concepts has been less than enthusiastic.